Mystery publishing, from idea to bookshelf

March 27, 2015

Clean Reader: Who’s behind it and what’s next?

by Erin Mitchell

In March, 2010, my friend and YA author Marley Gibson received an email from a school librarian in Riceville, Tennessee. The librarian, Cheryl, explained to Marley that while her students loved her Ghost Huntress series, she was distressed because she had to go through each with a Sharpie (she was specific about this) before shelving them to “mark out bad words.”

In other words, she censored them.

Marley was furious. She responded to Cheryl and contacted her publisher. As a reader, I was horrified, and I contacted a number of reporters. Marley’s publisher didn’t want to pursue it. The only response I got was from a Washington Post education columnist, who contacted the county school board, but didn’t write anything when she got no response.

In other words, nobody gave much of a shit.

When I was growing up, my dad took the attitude that anything I read wouldn’t harm me, and as a result, he didn’t censor nor regulate what I chose to read. Thankfully, the good folks at the Greenlake library in Seattle didn’t censor books. I read a lot of books that were age-inappropriate, and boy, I’m glad that I did. (So if we ever meet in person and you’re offended by my language, feel free to blame Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, Thomas Hardy, Judy Blume, Colleen McCullough, and Stephen King, among others.)

Clean Reader is a reading app that “prevents swear words in books from being displayed on your screen.” The app is free for Apple and Android devices. The app has four settings—Off, Clean, Cleaner, or Squeaky Clean—that affect which words (if any) are hidden.

Until yesterday, the app had an integrated bookstore. As of right now, it does not. In response to (strong) objections from authors, Inktera removed their store from the Clean Reader app. This means that as of this morning, the store page in the app is empty. Inktera still shows up on the app's "More" tab, but I expect this will change, too.

Clean Reader is an ebook reader, and as such it can still be used to read ePub and PDF books, such as those purchased from "open" stores like Google and Smashwords.

So...how can authors prevent readers from using this app to read their books? The short answer is that unless an author holds their ebook rights and chooses only to publish on Kindle and iBooks with DRM, she or he can't. Think of it this way: With paper books, you can't stop anyone with access to a pen from redacting or replacing words in their paper copy of your book...this is the same principle. Authors can raise the issue with their publishers, but I’d bet money doing so won’t get you anywhere.

The above leaves aside the discussion around DRM as a whole and closed vs. open ebook systems. I do, however, think that’s a discussion worth having.

When it comes to reading, I have always been an advocate of choice and opponent of censorship. As Terri pointed out yesterday, if a reader prefers books without certain words, there are more than enough to choose from. If a parent wants to control which words their kids read, again, they have more options than a dog has fleas.

Which brings me back to Clean Reader. I was curious to know how it came to be, so I did some digging. Here’s what I learned:

Foul language is both degrading and harmful to the spirit. We should not let others influence us to use foul language. Instead, we should use clean language that uplifts and edifies others, and we should choose friends who use good language. Setting an example will encourage those around us to use clean language.

Here’s what I find interesting about this: The church’s language talks about words you use. Not censoring the words other people use. The Maughans appear to have missed this.

Page Foundry’s CEO, Dan McFarland, has been extremely responsive, thoughtful, and transparent in helping me understand Clean Reader from a technological perspective. If you’re inclined to criticize them for taking on this project, I would argue that’s akin to blasting McDonald’s for selling food to people at risk of heart disease.

Jared Maughan, on the other hand, responded to only one of my emails with: “We'll have more updates later. Thanks!”

Huh. One might almost think the Maughans have something to hide. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks maybe they have some weird motive in all of this, other than wanting to encourage censorship.

Because, really, wouldn’t their energy and money have been better spent on, say, compiling a list of books they consider acceptable, and putting those into an app?

2 Comments

Erin, as a former teacher and lifetime reader, I abhor book censorship. I focused on this issue quite a bit when earning my Masters in Library Media. I am all too familiar with teachers who black out words in books that their students read as a class. During my Masters' practicum, I witnessed a librarian pull Perks of Being a Wallflower from the shelf, stealth censorship by a librarian. I sadly suspect that the parents who are so intent upon censoring their children's reading are damaging their children's ability to enjoy the true joy of learning.

Oh, my! When I was a little girl I zipped through all of the children's section in which I had interest. Upon discovering the wonderful world of the adult section, I was in heaven! Until, that is, the librarian banished me from the adult section...my parents continued to check out books for me, but "edited" the choices so I was forced to borrow certain books from their room or from parents of friends. My borrowing technique was, basically, stealing then replacing the books on stealth mode. Not one person seemed to object when I read the Bible in the third grade and that Book shocked me far more than any trashy literature I could get my hands on.